Three-dimensional micromodel of clay block masonry wall

Abstract

In designing and implementing earthquake resistance for clay block masonry infill integrated into a structural frame, with or without openings, the infill wall should be taken into account. Presumably, simplified models, acceptable for practical use, could be applied for that purpose. However, the anisotropy of clay block masonry units, masonry mortar joints, and unit contact properties as well as the high variance of material properties limit their ability to describe the actual earthquake resistance of clay block masonry. In this work, we consider a three-dimensional micromodel of a clay block masonry wall, with the inclusion of masonry unit anisotropy and masonry mortar joint and unit contact properties. To avoid the excessive calibration procedure of the wall micromodel, the wall constituents were calibrated separately beforehand, which resulted in a high correlation of computational and experimental results without further need for calibration. Using a calibrated micromodel, the influence of variance in material properties on the wall's resistance was investigated. The influence was showed not to be negligible, which may significantly affect the presumed behaviour of the whole structure.